


Wildflowers

by EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12



Series: January: 31 Days Challenge [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Flowers, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Loss, M/M, Pining, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Unrealized Lovers, oh god im so sorry, soft, wildflowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28520745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12
Summary: Cody is halfway across the galaxy when he learns of Obi-Wan's death at the hands of Rako Hardeen.In the midst of sandstorm of Tatooine, separated by time and distance, Obi-Wan can feel Cody fading.You belong among the wildflowers; you belong somewhere close to meFar away from your trouble and worry; you belong somewhere you feel free.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: January: 31 Days Challenge [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089257
Comments: 9
Kudos: 78





	Wildflowers

**Author's Note:**

> Well this idea hit me like a bus this morning and I thought it would be a good piece for the day. 
> 
> part of my 31 days of writing challenge for myself. Posting a one-shot or fic chapter every day in January. If you ahve a request (romantic or platonic) send them my way ;) Any rating
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Please R and R, let me know what you think!

The sun never set here. It had been the first thing that they were told upon arrival and now, on their third day, Cody found himself tired of the daylight. While the sun never set fully, the light did fade into an ombre twilight, the thick, suffocating heat relenting the slightest amount as the men shuffled between the barracks tent and the command ship. The colors of the sky: All reds and oranges and resoundingly deep grays. It was beautiful, astonishingly beautiful, and Cody hated it.

Hated it because he shouldn’t have been there. Had no need to be there. It was a routine mission, one that could have been handled by any squadron of troops with half a brain and some measure of experience. But they had insisted that they go, insisted that they be gone.

Cody stepped around the back of the tent, the mingling sounds of some of the men’s snores and other’s restless shuffling within the tent fading as he took in the sight that lay beyond it. The never-ending light had given birth to a forest like Cody had never seen. Trees as tall as buildings on Coruscant and twice as thick. Others thin and spindly on their trunks, curving to seize the light they could grow towards. Low light shrubs and bushes that were dotted with berries and fruits that had been part of the dishes that they had been greeted with by their hosts.

Most striking were the flowers. They grew over and on and around everything as if the trees and rocks and streambeds were nothing but a canvas for them to crawl over. All colors, colors Cody was certain he had never seen before, with petals in all shapes and softness. There were some with petals that would stretch and curve in the same fashion as a fist, others with petals and leaves the length of a Republic starfighter. All wild, all encompassing. He hated them, too.

He reached a hand out, touching one that grew from the tree closest to him, the petal folding between his fingers until the indigo color there started to stain into the guards on his fingers. For a moment, he considered stopping, but another urge swept over him and he squeezed harder, until the petal was completely crushed in his hand. Until the remains were crushed velvet in his fist and the dye ran down his fingers as though he were bleeding purple to the ground below where it soaked in like raindrops.

As he opened his fingers, guilt overwhelmed him. It was more than destroyed, it was mangled in his fist, a poor facsimile of a flower now even if the color was even richer than it had been on the vine. He couldn’t look away from it, his breath starting to catch in his lungs. His rifle fell to the ground and he grasped desperately for his helmet, choking inside of its confines. As he pulled it free, the side smeared dark purple, as though there were a bruise spreading over the bottom of his face.

At first he thought it was the flower. Some toxin that had poisoned him as he destroyed it, but then the first teardrop fell onto his hand. It ran clear with the dye, carving a path even as it grew darker and darker until it too fell to the ground. He sucked in a shuddering breath and fell to his knees, pressing his forehead to the tree trunk. The guilt twisted in his guts, the remains of the flowering falling to the ground.

When they had comm’d in two days before, he had been the one that answered. The one that stood still, helmet in place, as Master Windu gave notice that General Kenobi had been killed by a bounty hunter during his short break on Coruscant. The one that had reported the news to their company, who had listened in stunned silence. One by one requesting their leave from the meeting. It had been him, stony-faced and silent, as he asked if they could attend the service only to find out he had been cremated the evening before at the temple.

In the hours since, all daylight, all never-ending, he had stood silent as the men recoiled in their own grief, shied away from him and his. He breathed deeply, the sobs racking his entire body, the perfume from the flower fragrant in his nose. Overwhelmingly sweet.

He let this moment run its course, staying pressed to the tree so long that his knees were stiff when he stood again. He blinked against the sun, his eyes having been closed so long that he could have forgotten the light. Beyond his blurry vision, not covered by his helmet any longer, the wildflowers spread and spread, covering his soght in an array of color.

“You would have liked this place,” He said, not smiling. It was a true. How many times had the General, had Obi-Wan, talked about things like this? How many times had he told Cody of the waters on Naboo or the ice caves in Ilum, talking about them with a sort of reverence that Cody had not understood until now. “The flowers.” He could feel another sob twisting in his throat. “And the trees.”

The men could grieve. And reminisce when they thought Cody couldn’t hear them, about all the adventures on different planets they had been. All the places the General had taken them. All the things that the General had done. Their general.

But the men had never known Obi-Wan. Not the man beneath the Jedi exterior. The one who loved to hum music as he read through the morning files, the one who had given Cody a book of poetry after Cody had inquired after one he had recited on one of their campaigns, and the one who had pressed a kiss to Cody’s lips. Their only shared kiss, before Obi-Wan told him that they couldn’t entertain anything more than that, not while Cody was under his command, not while both of their first duties was to the Republic. And after, none of the men knew of the sweet promise, the one that let Cody cling to hope. A promise for after the war.

He thought of that now, wanting to close his eyes but instead taking in the continuous, brilliant sheen of the flower petals. It was a beautiful place. Truly beautiful. He thought of Obi-Wan, of his body scattered in the gardens at the Jedi temple. Cody had never been inside the temple, but how could it be so beautiful as this? He deserved to be somewhere like this. Somewhere close to Cody, where war had never touched. Somewhere free.

He slid his helmet back on over his face, the world dimming around him but the sweet scent of the flower lingering still.

* * *

He’s standing in the window, looking out at the very beginnings of a sandstorm when the feeling washes over him. It’s a slight feeling, a hollowness, as though a candle he hadn’t quite known was lit in his chest had been extinguished. He shifted his eyes from the sand to the single, Alderaanean orchid resting in his window sill, the lavender colored petals shifting gently in the growing winds.

It was Cody. Had to be Cody. Finally gone. He closed the shutter on the window, stepping around to the next to do the same and the next and the next and the next until he finally pulled tight the damper on the door against the sand. There were already bits of it that had blown in, settling in piles against his sparse furniture. The trunk with all the signs of his old life, the bed that was starting to make his joints ache, the table where he ate alone, watching the twin suns set against the far horizon where he knew that Luke was waiting.

As he closed the door, he leaned his forehead against it. His back hurt. His back had hurt back during the war as well, but then it felt as though there were some purpose behind it. Now it hurt because his body seemed incapable of much else since he had arrived on Tatooine. He closed his eyes for a moment against the door, and unbidden, his thoughts went back to Cody.

If his back was hurting, it was nothing against the familiar ache of loss in his chest. He had lost so many people, so many places, that to lose another should not have hurt. Their faces and names and slight lights in the force had faded just the same as Cody’s now had. Anakin. Ahsoka. Padme. Satine. Siri. Bant. Mace. Qui-Gon. All gone, or at least, away from him.

He had lost Cody, too. Years before, when Cody had instead gone to the Empire. He had learned the truth of what happened after many evenings spent in the cantina in Mos Eisley after the threat of Anakin’s arrival to try and take Luke seemed less and less likely and he had allowed himself those evenings. Something about inhibitors. Mandatory orders. New stormtroopers. Thoughts that made him sick with both the reality of them and the fact that those things, that the truth, no longer mattered at all. When he opened his eyes again, he was looking at the flower.

What had happened to Cody? He was surprised that Cody had lived this long. That he hadn’t been killed the moment that Obi-Wan had survived that initial attack. What had he been doing in the meantime? What had they made him do? The flower offered no answers.

It was perhaps irresponsible of him to keep the flower. Bail had given it to him, a number of them on the ship where they had parted ways. On a planet where water was the most precious commodity, even the few drops per week it took to keep the orchid alive could be considered a waste. But now, the hollow feeling swelling in his chest as his memories of Cody flooded through him, he was grateful it was there. A tether to something alive, pulsing gently with the force.

He thought of the first and only kiss they had shared. The slightest touch of Cody’s lips on his own. He had loved him, ardently so. To the point that he had done a very dangerous thing for a man with his type of commitment to the Jedi and started to wonder about the potential for a life together after the war. He could not have left Anakin, but it had been becoming clearer and clearer to him that Anakin’s time in the Jedi, away form Padme would only extend as long as he was needed for the war. He had thought, like him, that Anakin was waiting.

Those thoughts took him down a dark line, and he forced them away. Instead, he took the flower from its perch on the window and carried it into the sitting room, letting it rest of the table next to where he sat carefully on the lounger. He lifted a finger to the petal, the petals silk-soft against his skin. He smiled, thinking of the night he had walked into the command tent to see Cody reciting to himself a poem from the book that Obi-Wan had given him, so lost in concentration that he hadn’t noticed Obi-Wan approach at all.

He wondered where Cody had been since the Empire had started. On planets where the Empire was invading and seizing control, or on some freighter in the middle of space. Was he still allowed to be called Cody? Or had they taken that from him to? Did he remember Obi-Wan at all? Did he hate him? Or did he think of that kiss when he wasn’t supposed to? Of all of the promises that Obi-Wan had thought about every day since he’d made them; all broken, all lingering.

“I’m sorry, Cody,” He said softly, his breathy voice shaking the flower just slightly.

He wanted to say more, but couldn’t. To say that Cody deserved so much more than that. That Cody deserved more than Obi-Wan could have ever offered him and it was cruel of him to have ever pretended otherwise. To ignore the reality of who they had been and who they were going to be and make promises that he could never have kept. But he didn’t speak other words.

Instead he closed his eyes, stroking the petals the flower softly so as not to damage them, and let his grief be absorbed into the force. It didn’t stop the thin trickle of tears that ran down into his beard, now almost completely white. But they didn’t hurt like he had expected. He had expected pain when he thought of Cody, but what he had learned is that love was far too gentle to leave lingering pain. Even when he thought of Anakin, his son, his brother, there was not pain. Only a gentle peace.

He pictured Cody in all of the places they had been together. Surrounded by the sea or trees or shrouded in flowers. In a place where he was free. 


End file.
